Chapter 20

‘Are you any good at decorating?’ she asked, leaning through the open window and kissing him as he sat in the car outside the house.

‘Decorating,’ he repeated, ‘Yes, well I’ve done a bit of it at home.’

‘Come and see what I’ve got for us. It needs a bit of work done on it I’m afraid.’

She led him through the garages and up a dusty staircase in a corner that he had not previously noticed. At the top was a door which gave entry to a set of low grimy rooms which had probably been a staff flat once upon a time.

‘I don’t know when it was last used,’ said Amber as she showed Toby over it.

‘A long time ago I should think.’

He opened a door and peered inside.

‘Oh, it even has a bathroom. Yuck. Have you seen that loo though?’

‘That’s one of your jobs,’ declared Amber immediately.

‘Have you told your parents that you intend converting this into a love-nest?’ enquired Toby.

‘No, of course not silly. I said that I thought that it would be nice to have a quiet place to study. I did also say that I could use it to entertain my friends if I could make it nice enough.’

‘What did they say?’

‘Pussycat always gets her way when she talks nicely to Daddy,’ purred Amber, snuggling up against him.

‘Careful now,’ he chuckled, ‘You’ll make me passionate.’

‘Let me feel,’ she whispered, pressing herself against him and tilting her head back so that he could kiss her waiting lips.

A while later she gave a little giggle, ‘Oh yes, you’re definitely passionate. Yummy.’

‘If this is going to go on for an entire month I’m going to go out of my mind,’ he groaned.

‘It won’t be as long as a month,’ promised Amber, ‘Once we get this place fixed up you’ve got a lot to teach me. According to Emma we can have a lot of fun without going the whole way.’

We certainly can,’ breathed Toby. ‘Lead me to a broom and a paint brush, I must get started at once.’

It took the two of them several days to clean away the many layers of dirt and grime that had accumulated over the years. There were one or two items of furniture that Amber decided could be pressed into use given a clean, a nail here and there and a coat of paint, and these were put to one side. The rest of the stuff was taken round to the back of the garages and one afternoon they had an enormous bonfire. At last they started to see the light of day, both literally and metaphorically. The dirt and cobwebs caked onto the windows were scraped away and the entire place seemed much lighter and airier as a result. Once the old paintwork was washed down and the floors were scrubbed, Amber’s idea began to look more promising.

‘I think we’ll paint everything white,’ declared Amber, ‘It’ll make the ceilings seem higher for a start.’

‘What about a nice orange wall?’ suggested Alan who had taken a break from his Jaguar to check on progress.

‘Eeyuck,’ was his sister’s prompt response and that was the end of that.

By a rare stroke of luck Amber’s project happened to coincide with a certain amount of refurbishment that was taking place at “Melvesham Motors”. Amber and Toby took a ride down there one morning and Pussycat purred round her Daddy and acquired a couple of rather nice old-fashioned wooden desks from the Accounts Department. She also reserved all the old carpet that was being taken out of the offices with a view to laying it in the hall, the bathroom and the tiny bedroom which it had been decided to turn into a separate study for Alan. The staff restroom was being revamped and Amber was thrilled to learn that she would shortly be inheriting a small but serviceable old fridge that would enable her to keep drinks cold and also to make ice-cubes. When the items were delivered to “Hill House”, some cans of white paint mysteriously appeared with them which were totally unexpected but extremely welcome.

This purring bit works like a dream,’ said Toby admiringly, ‘You’re dangerous.’

‘Am I Tobee?’ Amber rubbed herself against him sensuously.

‘Very,’ he gasped, ‘But I like it.’

What Amber did not realise was that at that particular moment her parents would have given her literally anything. Whilst somewhat bewildered, they were absolutely delighted by the transformation that they had seen take place in her almost overnight. Her constant aura of happiness was a great joy to them and their approval of her relationship with Toby was wholehearted. Whether they actually knew what she was up to over in the flat above the garages they did not say, but even if they did, they would not have stopped her for the world.

Amber was just wondering what to do about carpeting for the lounge of “The Retreat”, as it had been named, when her mother came to the rescue. She suddenly remembered that when they had re-carpeted the dining room of the house when they bought it, the original floor-covering, a thick shag-pile carpet, had been stored in the attic as it had seemed too good to throw out, its only real fault being its colour. Fortunately it had been carefully packed away in plastic sheeting and when Toby and Amber got it down they were delighted to find that there was more than enough to carpet the new room wall-to-wall.

With floor coverings ready to be put down, Amber and Toby first set to work with their paint brushes. Inexperienced as they were, it took quite a long time to cover the entire area with the necessary two coats and half way through they felt that the task was never ending. However they got there in the end and were highly delighted by the final result of their labours. Laying the carpets was heavy work and Alan was hauled away from his beloved car for two days while the work was in progress. Toby used two packets of Stanley knife blades and endless boxes of carpet tacks and declared at the end of it that if he didn’t like Banking then he felt that he had already done his apprenticeship as a carpet fitter.

Whilst the boys were thus engaged Amber and her mother went through the many bags of curtains which had been surplus to requirements following their move to “Hill House”. Luckily they managed to unearth the curtains that actually matched the old dining-room carpet. Those only needed cutting down to make them fit the windows at “The Retreat”. At Toby’s suggestion, Jackie Stevenson and her trusty sewing machine were pressed into service and she altered them all in the space of an afternoon and evening. All that it cost Amber was a large box of chocolates and some reels of cotton so she thought it was money extremely well spent.

The flat did not boast a kitchen as such, merely a sink unit in one corner of the lounge and a space where an electric cooker had presumably stood at one time. Amber decided that she was unlikely to ever do more than make tea or coffee there, so they decided that the little fridge would fit just nicely in the space where the cooker must have lived. Toby then had the idea of forming a bar off the wall beside the sink to make a feature. Pussycat purred round Tom Stevenson and some off-cuts of timber and boarding were found in the store behind his yard. Toby and Andrew constructed the base out of pine strips and there was a large enough piece of white melamine to make the worktop. The end result was really quite pleasing.

Finally it was finished. The painting was done, the carpets were down, the curtains were up and the desks installed.